"The men have salt."
Translation:Die Männer haben Salz.
41 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I don't really agree.....Menschen is people, humans at least, while Männer should be translated " Men" only!
I presume that the suggested answer from Duolingo was different when they posted that comment.
In nominative case, use "Die" for undefined nouns like "Männer"
Well, I'm sure there's a reason, but I wouldn't understand Männer as undefined, since it isn't "people", but "men", meaning masculine. Is this a rule to apply for other cases?
In German you use "die" for masculine and feminine plurals... der Mann > die Männer / die Frau > die Frauen
Thank you. That makes sense. Well... no it doesn't, but it's German, so whatever.
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Lol, if you think German is illogical from the perspective of being an English speaker, I don't know what you'd think of French! ;)
I think it must be kind of like in English when you walk into a room and say "Hi, guys" and there are girls in the room too. "Guys" may be originally masculine, but today it can be taken to just mean "people".
I've actually addressed groups of girls as guys many times. Mainly because calling them girls always sounds a little condescending. Only had one complaint too!
yes Mensch is people, but my original is "the men have" so asking for both answers is false, men is Männer and not Mensch
I marked Die Mánner (which was the third row) and duolingo says: "not correct. Correct is the following two"...and yes, the totally same sentence is a correction. So I think there is a bug here in the application...i read it 3 times, and totally the same.
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If you entered "Mánner" like in your comment, the issue was likely your accent mark. An umlaut is two dots: Männer,
Wouldn't Mensch be man in the same way that man used to be commonly used to refer to the entire species?(man/mankind/humanity) That wouldn't make sense with the English translation here.
I am not sure about the actual German term here, but in a previous problem I have translated Menschen men and it took a life from me. Because of that I have NOT chosen Menschen as a translation for men here and it took a life again. The consistency really needs to be checked here. (also I think Menschen should mean human, people, humanity, so I agree with the program correcting me previously, it should not be just men)
Couldn't agree more, Menschen presumably includes females, Manner ( sorry no umlats), exclusively men.
No, "Salz haben die Männer" means "Salt has the men". "Die Männer haben Salz" is the correct tranlation.
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Technically, yes. The verb (haben) is conjugated to show the plural subject (men/Männer), and the verb is properly in second position. So it's grammatically correct. German allows the word order to be switched up a bit. But unless you are really emphasizing that the men have SALT, it sounds pretty odd.
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No. The general rule is that the verb must be in second position. In your example, it is third.
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Die is feminine, but also plural. This sentence has plural "men," not singular "man." So you need to use the plural definite article, die.
Ok clarification here... Do we need to capitalize EVERY single noun wherever it is in the sentence? Swear I saw the same thing in Spanish lessons too. My spell checker is a causing havoc with this.